Disclosed herein are a method and apparatus for dynamic power management in marking devices, as well as corresponding apparatus and computer-readable medium.
Marking fusers typically use multiple heating elements (e.g., lamps) throughout the system. For instance, in a roll-based fuser there may be heating elements within the fuser roll, the pressure roll, and external heat rolls. These heating elements may operate independently inside the various rolls to provide the necessary heat in the fusing nip to achieve fix and gloss requirements. During the warm-up process, all the roll surface temperatures need to reach a specified range before printing begins.
For current fusing configurations, some rolls heat-up to their prescribed target range faster than other rolls due to differences in materials, geometry, fuser element power, etc. This is an important observation because the fuser warm-up time is determined by the last roll reaching its set point. For example, a copier may have external heat rolls that may heat up in 4 minutes, a pressure roll that may heat up in 4 minutes, and a fuser roll that may heat up in 8 minutes. Therefore, the warm-up time for the copier is 8 minutes because it is constrained by the roll with the longest warm-up time. In this example, it turns out that the distribution of fuser element power to the various rolls has not been optimized with respect to the temperature dynamics during warm-up.